There have been many attempts to filter water. One such conventional recycling apparatus is sold commercially under the Cyclonator™ name. A description can be found on the internet at www.cyclonator.com. This system uses numerous hoses to and from a specially designed washing platform, an additional separate filtering tank to remove larger debris and oils, a special holding tank, and two vacuum canister type filters that require expensive filters. This recycling apparatus provides no visual monitoring ability except for vacuum gauges, has no pH monitoring nor automatic adjustment capability, and the location of the unit has to be in close proximity to the wash platform and the power washer. Furthermore, the filtering apparatus is difficult to maintain, requires a large area of space and numerous extra equipment at additional cost. Moreover, the vacuum or pressure used to force the wash solution through a filter can undesirably force dirt through filters.
There are many other systems that use pressure or vacuum, including those from Cyclonator standard filtration weir, www.cyclonator.com; Powder-X Pretreatment Station, Powder-X Coating Systems, Inc., www.powder-x-.com; Rapid Pretreatment Station, www.rapidengineering.com; PKG Equipment, Inc., www.pkgequipment.com; Water Treatment Tech Equipment, MFG.; Pressure Island; Arkal Filtration; ADF-Liquid Filtration; Kemco Systems; and Tiger Enterprises, 39126 Alston Ave., Zephyrhills, Fla. 33542.
Two open water filtration systems, CFS3 and CMAFU-2 are commercially sold by HydroEngineering, disclosed at www.hydroblaster.com. However, in these systems the filtered water is not continuously filtered through the filter media and there is only one filter media. While there are other filtering systems disclosed on the website which refer to circulation of water for multiple passes through polishing media (see description of Model ACF3) this appears to be a closed system since hydrobiodigesters must be utilized.
There is a need for an improved water filtering apparatus that does not require a vacuum or pressure pumps, provides easy visual inspection of the filters during operation, is easy to maintain and operate, and can be scaled to any size operation.